Video content captured by a camera coupled to a computing device or host processing system includes sending either encoded captured video or raw (not encoded) captured video to the host processing system. The host processing system may perform video analytics and/or store the captured video content. Video analytics may include object tracking, pattern matching or feature extractions and various other types of analysis to pull information from the captured video. If raw captured video was received, the host processing system may also encode the raw captured video for storage purposes. The raw captured video may be encoded using various encoding schemes (e.g., H.264; H.265).
Interconnects commonly used for coupling a host processing system to one or more cameras may include interconnects associated with wired or wireless network interfaces (e.g., Ethernet) or associated with serial buses (e.g., Universal Serial Bus (USB)). These types of interconnects typically require that captured video be sent as either an encoded video data stream or as a raw video data stream. Cameras are increasingly being deployed that capture high definition video. This high definition video may result in a large amount of data passing between a high definition camera and a host processing system if raw captured video is sent. Also, if the captured video is encoded, the host processing system has to first decode the encoded captured video in order to perform video analytics. Further, some original video data may be lost during the encoding process by the camera and this may negatively impact the accuracy of the video analytics performed. It is with respect to these and other challenges that the embodiments described herein are needed.